The Pigeons of Orvieto
Andrew Frisardi
Pigeons are not in fashion, but never really
Out of fashion, either. The male displays
His fin-de-siècle nacreous cravat,
Parisian absinthe-tippling poet style.
He boasts the absurd bloating of his neck
To court his lady, who skitters down the roof.
In faltering flights they hop the tiles. They plop
Their bottom-heavy bodies. Their fluttering lumbers.
Turning around himself, making his neck
Swell like pride that won’t be swallowed, he tries
To mount, but only grasps her scent. For she
Has things to do: switching roofs for instance.
They touch down on some nearby tiles and coo,
A matronly darning-the-socks feel-good kind
Of throat hum on their makeshift cliff. That’s what
The bird book calls them: cliff dwellers. We are too,
In Orvieto’s squat medieval rises.
The pigeons stay occupied while people nap.
Pigeons persist. They mate in scorching sun.
The male keeps turning round, intently dumb.
In a hundred humid degrees the female pauses,
Presents her back, and spreads her tail: a fan.
They have converted the ventilation niches
Under the rooftops’ eaves to makeshift cotes.
The Orvieto pigeons have a station.
Etruscans carved the cliffs for them to dwell
In city walls, to eat when foes laid siege.
To this very day, they’re featured on local menus.
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Andrew’s notes: “I lived in Orvieto for nine years, and still reside not far away. I’ve never developed a taste for roasted pigeon. On the other hand, it’s springtime, and like Cole Porter said, even the pigeons in a medieval hilltown are doing it. Besides ducking from pigeons overhead, I’ve published poems recently in New Verse Review and Pulsebeat, and my introduction to Petrarch for A. M. Juster’s new translation of the Canzoniere was just published by Liveright.“
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Images: Two pigeons on a rooftop; Etruscan pigeon cotes.
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